Draft Bolivian freedom of information legislation should be adopted, but needs improvement according to the London-based freedom of expression group Article 19.
The group praised the draft bill’s broad application, including to private bodies performing public services, and a provision “to promote public transparency in public management.” Allowing the use of e-mail for requests and answers also was complimented in the recent statement (which also includes an English translation of the bill.)
However, Article 19 said, “The draft law has a number of shortfalls which should be addressed before it is adopted.”
“There is no clearly stated presumption of disclosure and there is a broad regime of exceptions for types of information that are ‘secret, reserved or confidential’ which takes no account of the public interest in having such information,” according to the critique.
“Furthermore, the Ministry of Institutional Transparency and Combating Corruption is supposed to be the oversight body for the legislation, but is not independent of government but an integral part of it.”
The lack of specific protections for whistleblowers who release information on wrongdoing or which would disclose a serious threat to health, safety or the environment also was considered a weakness.
“Finally, the language of the draft law is extremely difficult to understand in many parts – words such as gratuitous, complementation, impugnation which do not make sense are used (this may be because of poor translation, of course) – and the numbering of the provisions is wrong – for example, there are no Articles 48 and 49. It is clear that the draft law needs more work from a substantive and language point of view before it is adopted.”
Comments on the bill were made last fall by El Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresion y Acceso a la Informacion CELE (in Spanish).
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